Men and women of nearly all animals differ in their body

Men and women of nearly all animals differ in their body size a phenomenon called sexual size dimorphism (SSD). in regulation by the endocrine system). We explore adaptive hypotheses proposed to explain sex differences in plasticity including those that predict that plasticity will be lowest for traits under strong selection (adaptive canalization) or greatest for traits under strong directional selection (condition dependence) but few studies have tested these hypotheses. Studies that combine proximate and ultimate mechanisms offer great promise for understanding variation in SSD and sex differences in body size plasticity in insects. < 0.01; Table 2) and mean plasticity is greater in females than in males when body mass is the measure of size (= 3.32 < 0.01; Table 2). In contrast there are no general sex differences in plasticity when other measures of size are used (Table 2). However the general patterns appear to vary with the Ticagrelor source of environmental variation. When partitioning the data on plasticity in body mass according to the type of environmental manipulation plasticity differed between the sexes only when density competition diet quantity or diet quality was manipulated. This suggests that diet (quantity and quality) is likely more significant for producing sex-specific plasticity in nature but the number of studies manipulating other environmental variables is too small to generalize. Table 2 Sex-specific phenotypic plasticity in body mass and Pparg other measures of body size of insects Aside from these general patterns observed in our meta-analysis the three most significant observations are that (has large effects on patterns of SSD (Shape 1b) in order that populations encountering different temps in Ticagrelor character will exhibit huge variations in SSD actually when there is no hereditary differentiation in proportions Ticagrelor among populations. Such sex variations in plasticity most likely are likely involved in producing the geographic variant in SSD noticed for many pets (21). Utilizing a common-garden experiment Fairbairn (51) tested whether geographic variation in SSD of the water strider was due to genetic differences among populations or due to a sex difference in phenotypic plasticity of body size. Most of the geographic variation in SSD was produced by sex differences in plasticity (51). We suspect that this result-that plasticity explains much of the interpopulation variation in SSD observed in nature-will be common. The implications of large sex differences in plasticity are not limited to understanding variation in SSD within species; they could explain variation in SSD among species. This is because strong environmental effects on body size and SSD mean that no species will have one single characteristic estimate of SSD. Also because congeneric species are often allopatric and Ticagrelor thus encounter different environmental conditions differences in plasticity almost always are confounded by differences in environmental experiences. Even when sympatric related species often differ in diet or other aspects of their niche which can affect males and females differently generating differences in SSD. Because SSD varies over space and time within species SSD estimates used in comparative studies may not be representative of the Ticagrelor genetic difference in size between sexes (126) particularly if only a few individuals or one population of a species is used. Species-level estimates must therefore consider variation inbody size across time and space. Environmental effects on SSD can have profound implications for studies that examine evolutionary patterns of dimorphism. For example Rensch’s rule is often examined by plotting male size on female size using reduced major axis (RMA) regression; Rensch’s rule is supported if the slope is >1 but not if the slope is <1 (50 55 The assumption underlying such analyses is that variation in these slopes reflects genetic differentiation among populations: Either males or females are evolving more quickly. However as discussed above these slopes can be environment dependent (Figure 1a). Environmental effects are not as likely to affect comparisons among species collected within common environments but for species compared across geographic areas or different seasons or feeding on different diets sex differences in plasticity can affect RMA slopes and thus tests of Rensch's rule. In brief sex differences in plasticity are common and.